Ones starring in big comic book franchises. Our annual list of the actors who produce the best and worst returns on investment are topped by super heroes. No. 1 is Jeremy Renner, one of the stars of Marvel’s Avengers series. He produced $82.70 in box office dollars for every $1 paid in salary for his last three films.

Talent costs have increased with each installment of the Avengers series, now on its third. But even when the Disney-owned studio has to dole out upwards of $20 million in upfront and back-end profits to its stars, multibillion-dollar box office grosses make the eye-watering spending worthwhile.

“The percent of budget costs have certainly skewed heavily to cast now, whereas maybe in the early ones it was more visual effects or below the line,” Marvel president and producer Kevin Feige told Forbes last year. “But that’s okay because [the actors] are the best effects.”

Luckily for studios, they can get actors for cheap in the first installment of a franchise. Gadot earned a reported base salary of $300,000 up front, plus box office and back-end bonuses for her role in the DC Comics hit, which grossed $821.8 million. And in the end, Gadot's final paycheck greatly exceeded her initial pay.

Other actors boast giant paychecks but disappointing recent runs at the box office. A series of flops means Matthew McConaughey scored the worst ROI on our list, producing just $1.10 after taking highly paid roles in disappointing movies like The Dark Tower. The other actors who generated the worst returns include Christian Bale ($1.50), Matt Damon ($3.70), Melissa McCarthy ($4.90) and Reese Witherspoon ($5.20).

To compile our rundown, we looked at the last three Hollywood films each actor played a major role in. Only live-action movies released on more than 2,000 screens before June 1, 2018 were considered. Actors who had not starred in a new eligible movie since last year’s scoring period were ineligible. A limited definition of movie operating income is calculated by deducting budget from worldwide box office. Operating income from the star’s three most recent significant movies is then divided by the actor’s estimated pay for those films. All earnings are Forbes estimates.